If you love someone, set them on fire.

If you’re looking for a hot place to hang out and smoke this weekend, head out to Hunters Point on Saturday night for the Tastee Flame party. Get your pyromania on and cook for your friends! It’s sure to melt their hearts.

You’ll burn $10-20 getting in the door, but bring a few more crisp bills for the toasted desserts. Buy a raffle ticket, and you could win your very own flame thrower! The music is that silly thumping shit, but hey, you can’t have everything!

Man, this is the coalest thing I’ve seen in a while! It’s gonna kick ash! Whoooeeee, am I on fire or what?!

EDIT 6/7/05 by M: There used to be a picture here of the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk. For this I received copious comments and messages from various half-wits and authors who were outraged with my brand of humor. That pic is now gone, but only because my ignorance of copyright status was brought to my attention.

The photo is as sacred as any sacred object gets. And using it to promote a little fun is a serious lapse of judgement. I have done stupid things in my life that I regret deeply.. so I am empathetic to the author making a mistake and I know the regret tha he/she will inevitably feel after growing a little.

Won’t kids be reading this blog?

I am all for free speech, but come on? Mistakes happen all the time. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the author changes that picture on his/her own.

There’s nothing hysterically distasteful about this photo. The fact that this story is still online just reaffirms my feeling that sf.metblogs exists only as a self-serving, masturbatory ego trip for the folks who post here.

But, I guess you’re going to tell me that this site isn’t for me, despite the fact that I’m a 30-year old resident of San Francisco. I used to think you were wrong, but if this post is indicative of the overall direction of the site, I guess you were right all along.

The Committee: Just to let you know, Brian Lam is also a listed writer for the SF Metblog. And it’s clear he disagrees with Morey vehemently about the photo. As do I, and I’m a writer on this blog as well.

Metroblogging holds a strict no editorial interference policy. Therefore, one person’s entry does not reflect on the site as a whole.

However, I do agree that this topic should be discussed thoroughly in-house, as it’s clear it’s inflammatory.

And Morey? If agreeing that this photo is inappropriate makes someone a pompous ass, at least four other metblog writers must be pompous asses as well. How grand that we share such things in common.

Wow, we’re really bringing up the level of discourse here, aren’t we? You should follow up with a “I fucked your mom” joke. That would be icing at this point.

Nicole said: “Metroblogging holds a strict no editorial interference policy. Therefore, one person’s entry does not reflect on the site as a whole.”

If that’s the case, the policy is bullshit. You may know that, and it may make you feel better about your contribution here when asshats like Morey post their tripe, but your readers don’t know that. All they know is that one of you posted a story with a very disturbing photo, and the rest of you allowed it to stay there. That hurts every single one of you.

I know that I wouldn’t want my name associated with a site that posts this kind of content. There’s a difference between editorial interference and common decency.

On an unrelated note, these comments are really fucking hard to read. Can you put a between them or alternate background colors or something?

oh look, the committee is back – we missed you guys, or guy, or gal, as the case may be.

as far as the comments being hard to read, i hadn’t noticed a problem. what browser are you using?

but that’s not really the problem at hand, is it?

i’m the local go-to girl for problems with this site, so concerns about content, etc, rightly go to me and have been coming to me over the course of the day on this issue.

nicole’s explanation of our policy is correct, though we are still in the process of addressing this current question.

when i first saw this photo, i didn’t really recognize it as being real, or as being a photo of a human on fire. i think that’s the experience of several other authors and readers.

regardless of my personal thoughts on this post (which isn’t the problem, the photo is the problem, the post is just another event notice), i do fear when “common decency” dictates things – just look at the federal government htese days.

again, what i’m guessing is just an attempt at gallows humor misfired.

and readers do know that this is not a solo blog, it’s a group effort. the committee is right that it effects the group – which is why the group is talking about it right now.

again though, since you’re back, i – as ever – invite the committe or any of its members to write for the site. unless of course you do, as i suspect, already write for the site.

cd said: “i do fear when “common decency” dictates things – just look at the federal government htese days.”

Hrmm, I guess I should have been more clear. By ‘common decency’ I really meant “respect for human life”. The sorry state of our democracy isn’t relevant to our conversation. As for the debate, I don’t really understand why there needs to be a discussion.

It’s a simple question, does sf.metblogs.com love human life, or is sf.metblogs.com no better than stilesproject. There’s a perfect place for Morey to post his recycled death and goatce pictures–blogspot.

Of course, if metblogs has become such a tool of our corporate overlords that human life has no value, let’s assign a fiscal motivation. The picture that Morey posted will get metblogs.com added to the blacklists that corporate America uses to protect their employees from filth while on the clock. People won’t be able to browse metblogs during work hours, and profits from advertising will disappear.

As for the legibility issue, I’m using Firefox. The problem is that there’s no way to determine where one comment begins and another ends, other than to look at the Posted by: line. There are no changes in font, or dividers to separate the comments. You can’t tell where one stops and the next starts without reading the entire thread.

So you can take a stand against my simple questions immediately, but it takes four days to discuss whether or not a picture of a guy burning to death is appropriate for the front page of your site. That’s rich.

duh: How do you know he set himself on fire? Were you there? Did no one around him have water?

Er… I think we’re lacking a little cultural context on why this is inappropriate. It’s not that it’s a picture of someone burning — though that is offensive on a certain gore level — it’s that this is a picture of a Buddhist monk burning after he set himself on fire. He gave his life to protest China’s occupation of Tibet. At least, that’s why this is inappropriate in my book.

I think setting one’s self on fire in protest is inappropriate generally. At least, it wouldn’t be my chosen method of getting my point across – and I’m not sure how much it aids the cause. But this isn’t a political science course.

As far as response timing goes, this post went up on the 2d and the negative reaction was brought to my attention earlier today. While I do keep fairly close tabs on the goings-on here, I, along with everyone else involved, have a regular full-time job aside from this (along with the management of another website). You just posed your questions today.

First off, the manner in which the picture is used is “distatesful”, but only as dictated by “common decency” as previously stated. Why is it that people find the need to censor these things in accordance with “common decency”.

If you say, “do it for the kids”, don’t hide behind children. The internet is a pay service, and for that is not to be regulated like radio or network TV which is accessible to anyone. Children (if guardians are so inclined) can have heavy limitations on internet. There’s little chance that they’ll be at school and use the internet unregulated for as long as they want.

And for whoever called the picture sacred, please stop being self-righteous. People make fun “sacred” religious icons very openly. I’m not saying this is ok, but when movies ridicule Jesus, or jewish practices, people don’t seem so up-in-arms about it, why pick and choose?

As far as the author using this picture, I don’t think it lies in accord with the philosophy and/or general direction of this website, and that seems to be the only real argument against using that picture. But SF is a progressive place right? (Less and less everyday though, I think).